Before checking into the same hotel in Mandalay, Cale crossed to the corner restaurant and picked up a few beers and a bucket of ice. He took a long shower, ridding himself of travel, dirt, and sweat. He sat just inside the balcony doors to avoid the direct sun and drank the coldest of the beers. The distinctive chirp of trishaw bells sounded off like a flock of birds chirping an alarm for a stranger walking down the street, followed by the usual squawk, “Hello Misses. Where you go? You want trishaw? Hello Mister.” Cale got up and looked down to the street below. He saw seven boys on rust-red trishaws near the bus stop. He also saw his elderly trishaw driver sitting separately from the boys, scowling up at Cale. His face was stone with course lines and no expression. He just sat and stared.
Cale felt the eyes of the Tatmandaw all around him, watching his every move. They seemed to watch everybody’s every move. The saying he had heard over and over again, “the walls have eyes,” peaked in his mind. Cale sat back down and fought with his own frustrations about the Burmese military government and the way it enslaved its culturally diverse groups by wielding terror, rape, and brutality as weapons, forcing its own poverty-stricken people into submission.
A knock at the door startled Cale back onto the balcony. He turned in his chair and didn’t make a sound. He looked over the railing. The old man on the trishaw was gone. He looked down to the front entrance stairs and saw no one.
There was a second knock at the door, louder this time.
Cale moved off the balcony and stood in the middle of his room. The tile floor felt cool against the bottom of his feet. Keeping one eye on the door Cale quaffed the rest of his beer and waited in silence—for what, he had no idea. He crouched down and watched a shadow under the door waver, then a letter slid under the door and across the tiles. Cale froze, watching the shadow under the door. The letter was upside-down. The shadow moved away from the door, and Cale picked up the letter and sat down at the foot of his bed.
It was from Paula Henderson. Cale laughed at his own paranoia. The letter simply gave her room number, which coincidently was on the roof balcony. Cale smiled, knowing he would find a purchase of compassion in Paula with all he had seen in such a short period of time. She knew so much more than he did. He knew that nothing he said or described to her would shock her. She would have answers with depth, somehow mixing reality inside Burma’s borders with the perception of reality from the outside world. Cale presumptuously packed his bag and beers and slipped up the side stairs.
Her door was open. Paula was sitting at a small desk in a lime-green string top and a purple and blue Thai sarong she had bought at an evening market in Surat Thani, Thailand. She was writing in her journal when Cale knocked on the door jam.
She smiled and got up when she saw him at her door, “Hey. I was hoping you’d come up and see me when you got in.” She walked over and hugged Cale affectionately.
Cale reciprocated. A faint smell of coconut and jasmine filled the air between them as they parted. Through the doorway, the sunlight filled the depths of Paula’s green eyes with cascading reflections.
Paula continued to smile as she spoke, “I’m glad you’re here.” She scratched Cale’s chest with her short, manicured fingernails. She turned to close her journal and asked, “How was it?”
“I didn’t make it to Lashio. By the time I had gotten to Hsipaw I had seen and heard enough from other travelers to persuade me to change my plans.” Cale offered, “Would you like a beer?”
“I already have one open, but thanks. Let me take yours and put them on ice with mine.” Cale saw a few beers and a small bottle of Mekong whiskey in the sink icing down alongside four bottles of Red Bull. She grabbed her sunglasses and suggested, “Let’s sit out on the verandah for awhile.”
Paula took Cale by the hand and led him out on to the rooftop deck to a glass-top table with four chairs. The sun baked the red tile deck to a scalding temperature during the day. Cale got to the table, cracked open a beer, and asked, “Where did you end up going?”
Paula placed her beer on the table with two glasses and explained, “I came here to Mandalay and took off down river on a boat to Pagan. I took a local bus back. I rented a bicycle in Pagan and wandered around the pagodas for a couple of days. It was beautiful at sunset with all the pagodas turning a soft reddish-orange against a deep blue sky. And the trip on the local bus was highly entertaining. Many people on the bus tried to get me to go on another bus, a tourist bus. The bus driver said I couldn’t ride his bus because it only took locals, as in, no Westerners. It was a wild ride and a lot more fun than listening to a bunch of Westerners gripe about the heat. We had lots of unexpected stops for people with their pigs or chickens, that kind of thing. While I was in Pagan I did see lots of tourist buses. The tour companies herd their guests around like cattle. On a plane, on a bus, you have a guided tour to a pagoda or a town, stop for lunch at a designated overpriced place, get back on the bus, go to a government-run museum or something, then it’s off to an overpriced hotel. Then do it all over again the next day. Did you know it costs ten bucks for a tourist to get into Pagan? It’s ridiculous. I’m so glad I can see this place my way instead of the way the government wants me to see it. The tourists on the bus see none of the horrors we do traveling independently. It’s really a bunch of smoke and mirrors the way they do it. The S.L.O.R.C., as it used to be called, just military peons, is really out to get your money, period.”
“State, Law, and Order something…?”
“Restoration Council, the acronym is more fitting,
S.L.O.R.C. Sounds like a vicious beast out of the depths of hell or something.”
Cale laughed as he filled Paula’s glass again and responded, “It seems like we came all this way to see a piece of original history that the government has turned into a fake.”
“That’s true, all accept the people—they are real, and yet they have to bury their true selves way down deep inside. I see through the government atrocities. We’ve both seen a bit of what they can do to the various peoples, and, in some degree, how they bought off some of the Buddhists for awhile; this time though, the flexibility of the Buddhist cultural backbone was necessary for their survival. For instance, the temples that the Buddhists build to honor their Lord Buddha are supposed to disintegrate of their own accord, but they aren’t allowed to do so because the government has stuck its policies in their face. All the important temples and pagodas have been refurbished for the tourists and their money. Unfortunately, instead of using traditional materials, they used gray concrete and mortar. It’s not even the same color. Some have even painted with a cheap whitewash, and all the semiprecious stones have been gouged out and replaced with pieces of glass or bits of mirror. The gold flake has all been carved off and repainted with Dutch Boy exterior gold house paint. Really tacky, but the tourists go for it because, for the most part, they don’t know any better. The government has taken everything of worth from these people.”
There was a light breeze blowing over the rooftop as the sky grew dark with night. Cale moved the short distance to the balcony railing and half sat on it while he described what he had seen on the train and what occurred in the hotel in Hsipaw with Ian and his girlfriend. When he finished he turned around and stood with his palms on the railing, looking out over the darkening town square and enjoying the night air.
Paula sat for a moment silently watching Cale before she put her drink down and moved to his side. She gently ran her fingertips down the underside Cale’s forearm and around to the top of his hand.
Cale absorbed the chill and turned towards her.
Paula smiled slightly and reached up, tenderly cupping Cale’s face and affectionately brought his to hers. She kissed him ever so softly.
Cale smelled jasmine and looked into her green eyes as she whispered, “I don’t feel like dwelling on world’s troubles anymore. I was hoping maybe you would stay with me tonight, and we could work out a few of our own together.” She caressed Cale on the neck and began to move very slowly so as not to frighten him away.
Cale felt the night breeze against his stomach as his shirt fluttered open. Her welcome hands felt warm against his skin.
Paula led Cale back into her room and shut the door. The louvers dropped, and their clothes fell away with the red dust of the day.